eLitmus: Jump Start Your Career

Geekonnet successfully walks, a step forward on the way to popularise Indian startups over the internet. This time we had a long interactive session with a visionary in the recruitment field. With a vision to make everybody find his right job. Elitmus is moving ahead on the principle of "Let the thirsty meet the well ". The days of 'Dream Job' is now over. It's the time when you start looking the Right Job for you. Similarly companies around the globe are now looking for Right person for them. Elitmus serves as a medium which helps the company end and the job seekers end, find each other through their innovative and appropriate techniques.

eLitmus is a first-of-its-kind service in the world. Since it was launched in 2005, eLitmus has been redefining how fresher and entry-level recruitment is done in India. Their proprietary pH Test evaluates job seekers based on a variety of parameters, and grades them nationwide using an advanced statistical model, resulting in a pH Score for each candidate. An extensive range of online tools that they provide help recruiters to easily screen and select candidates based on this and dozens of other parameters.

Aseem Marwaha   

Director, Corporate Business

Aseem did his undergraduate studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. After a brief stint in the paper industry, he moved to IT. He worked with Infosys and iFlex, where he developed custom software in the banking and enterprise domains. After that, he served as an advisor in recruitment strategy to companies like Synectics (now Logica), eCredit and Quidnunc. Last, he founded Browse Consulting, a highly successful recruitment firm in the software industry.

Today eLitmus is the largest independent evaluation body in Indian IT industry.

We(the Geeks): Do share your journey of last 3 years with our readers.

Aseem: When we started out, the existing players were operating on time & material model. The primary reason of outsourcing was logistics management rather than good evaluation. For example if anemployer needed to do recruitment at entry level, it could easily expect applications in thousands. It requires very low­end skills to process applications and administer tests on short­listed candidates. This was the key driver for companies to outsource.

The evaluation piece being outsourced was incidental, which came bundled with core need of logistics management. The other reason why a relevant and researched evaluation was never sought was talent crunch. A right evaluation would disqualify most of the job seekers and the companies would end up not meeting their target number of hires.

       In such a situation we took a very difficult call. We decided to focus on evaluation and bid time. We were confident that once the party was over in the economy, companies would look for smaller number of candidates and the ones who can perform. So we are suddenly in a sweet spot where in none of our competitors tests are as predictive as ours. In slow down companies are jumping for this value. 

We(the Geeks): So tell us more about your evaluation. What is the pH Test about? 
Aseem: Unlike time & material based solution providers in evaluation industry, we have a standardised test. This standardised test is called the pH Test that is potential to hire test. All our customers use this test as a first level filter.

        The good thing of pH Test is that the interpretation of this test is customer dependent. To explain lets take an example of CAT (common aptitude test of IIMs). At the end of the test you get a score. It does not tell you what kind of questions you answered. I could have answered more out of box thinking questions and scored lower marks than a person who has solved more perseverance questions. This is a problem. To understand the problem, lets say we need to hire domestic helps – driver, cooks and cleaning staff. Lets assume drivers earn more than cook who in turn earn more than cleaning staff. We give them a common test. Lets say the candidate scoring highest marks has scored very well in cooking and cleaning questions but poor in driving questions. As an employer if I only see overall marks, I will obviously hire the highest scorer. Needless to say that is a wrong choice. Hence our interpretation of score is dependent on skills being sought by customers rather than absolute.

         This company based customisation has helped us reduce percentage of under performers by more than 90% with most of our customers.

We(the Geeks): Do you visit individual colleges to administer pH Test? 

Aseem: Yes we do visit colleges when invited. Besides students take test outside of college as well. pH Test is conducted in various cities once every 3 weeks. The students can come to a location convenient to them and take the test. 

We(the Geeks): When and why should students take the pH Test? 

Aseem: Ideal time for students to take pH Test is 7th semester of their engineering. In case their college is a partner college of eLitmus, then they should take the pH Test in 6th semester. Customers of eLitmus visit partner colleges for campus recruitment. We keep churning the list of our partner colleges based on performance of their students with our customers in previous year.

The biggest reason why a student should take pH Test is to determine if s/he should make a career in IT industry. IT industry will keep undergoing recessions every few years. The average performers even with lot of experience will be laid off in such situations. Our significant focus is on testing raw ability of a student. If the student fares poorly in the test, s/he should look beyond IT industry rather than live with threat of being fired every few years.

The next reason why students should take our test is that over 100 employers today ask for pH Scores. So a single test opens the doors to multiple employers.

If you have any queries for eLitmus please do mail us. We will forward your questions to the company. Also we value your feedbacks regarding how to make these interviews more useful for our readers. Please feel free to comment or mail us at:

ranjeet@geekonnet.com
deepak@geekonnet.com

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